CREATIVITY, IDOLATRY, TRICKERY AND MIND-BOGGLING INEFFICIENCY - Irene Black's MySpace Blog | Irene Black - My Writing Journal and other Eccentricities

Time for a moan

I shouldn’t really be moaning because it’s been a fun week in many respects, ending with a sublime performance of Tristan and Isolde at the Royal Opera yesterday. Even the horrible staging didn’t annoy me too much – the front half of the stage where the action was, was bare. The rubbish was at the back - a load of dining tables with candelabras and men posing in dinner jackets. Quite how they fitted in to a medieval saga that takes place mainly on a ship and in a castle, beats me. But since this display kept appearing and disappearing behind a curtain at the back, I managed to ignore it most of the time. The applause at the end was tumultuous, but, as I heard one lady remark, ‘if that had been traditionally staged it would have brought the house down.’ Hear, hear!

I started attending art sessions on Wednesday after an absence of a year. Boy, do I need to practice! Mind you, it was a big mistake to try to paint this photo I took of my daughter-in-law by a waterfall in Thailand.Ever tried painting mist? With watercolour? Forget it…

I also enjoyed giving my penultimate Indian Art lecture on Thursday. In fact I loved every minute of it. The topic this week was ‘image worship’, a problematic concept for those raised in the Judaic-Christian-Islamic tradition – thou shalt not bow down before graven images and so on. Well, I hope I managed to make my students think again. It’s all too easy to dismiss an unfamiliar belief-system if you don’t understand it.

Saturday brought the second of Goldenford’s Creative Writing workshops on the five senses. It was part of the Guildford Book Festival. This time I was responsible for touch and sight. I decided to combine the two, getting the students to feel, without seeing, one of two pieces of Indian cloth, a painted cotton wallhanging of Ganesh and a sumptuous piece of woven silk and cotton, shot through with gold thread.

When they had described the feel of the cloth I let them see it, ultimately creating a scene that combined the two senses. Interesting results. I sensed an alienation from the Ganesh portrait, whereas the woven cloth inspired writing full of Eastern promise. I tried to inspire them myself, by reading a bit out of Darshan, to show multiple use of the senses to create atmosphere, carry the plot forward and tell the reader more about the character.

Now for the moan. On Tuesday the tree surgeons, whom I’d engaged at great expense, came to cut my Leylandii hedges and prune my eucalyptus and copper beach trees. At the end of a noisy day’s work (with me acting as tea lady) they skiddadled, leaving me to inspect their handiwork. I found: a bag of cement (used to fix my neighbour’s new fence post) left outside my back door; the old wooden fence post slung across a raised bed; my carefully-anchored bird table ripped from its mooring and moved; the trunk of an old fallen laburnum slung onto the shrubs; my hose attached to the outside tap (for fixing said fence post) and left in situ.

But these were minor irritations compared with my discovery that the crew had given up, a third of the way along the left-hand hedge and simply abandoned it. They had also given the eucalyptus a punk haircut instead of tidying it up. The foreman was called back and he was mortified (clearly helped by the fact that I haven’t paid them yet – they know they’re not getting it until the job’s complete). They are due to return asap – but I won’t be making any more cups of tea for that little gang of ne’er-do-wells.

Guildford Borough Council is so great. I’m so lucky to be living in such an enlightened town (NOT)! The latest meshuggas is the New Recycling System. The decree was delivered some weeks ago. Every household is to be issued with: an outside box for food waste (to be collected weekly); an inside box for food waste; a wheelie bin for waste ‘everything else’ (to be collected fortnightly-I ticked the box for a small one). That on top of the green box (for glass, cans and plastic bottles) and the purple box (for paper) that we already have.

I wrote to the council. ‘Everything else’ I pointed out, actually boils down mainly to food packaging (such as yoghurt pots). If it is acknowledged that food waste needs collecting weekly to stop it getting smelly, how come food remains adhering to packaging, equally smelly, are to be collected fortnightly? The Council replied. Wrap them in a plastic bag.
Excuse me? Aren’t we trying to exterminate plastic bags? Or hasn’t this fact filtered down to Guildford Borough Council yet?

The food caddies arrived this week. I’ve shoved them both outside. No point in falling over them before I have to, when the scheme starts in November. The wheelie bin arrived too. Yes, you guessed it. On my drive I found an ENORMOUS ugly horror designed for a ten-ton family, not for two delicate damsels (Okay,okay, cut the ‘delicate’). I phoned up the Council. Remove this monster, I told them, and bring me the small one I ordered (if you must). It will be done forthwith, they promised. Leave it where it is for collection. Five days and two phone-calls later it is still decorating my drive. The Council girl is getting fed up with me. ‘We can’t say when they will come,’ she finally admitted. ‘It’s a private firm (well, it would be. Wouldn’t it?). They have a long list to get through.’

‘ A long list?’ I snapped back. ‘That means they must have got it wrong lots of times.’ Well, yes, the girl conceded. There were ‘some’ mistakes. I await mistake-rectification. Meanwhile I have to put up with the alien in my front garden. I tried to get Joe to run it over, but she was afraid her car might come off worst in the battle (which is why I haven’t flattened it with mine).